


come touch me like i'm an ordinary man

by autoeuphoric (FreezingRayne)



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games)
Genre: Arguing, Gen, Injury, M/M, Politics, Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-12
Updated: 2019-03-26
Packaged: 2019-06-09 09:32:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15264555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FreezingRayne/pseuds/autoeuphoric
Summary: “Your marks are eroding. They are literally coming apart." He pronounces every syllable with clean emphasis. “And they’re going to take your flesh apart with them.”(Fenris's lyrium marks are killing him. Anders grudgingly tries to help. It goes about as well as expected.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Pear](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pear/gifts).



> Shoutout to Pear for allowing me to work out my complicated Anders and Fenris feelings in fic form. 
> 
> title from "Bullets" by the band Archive

For Anders, the elf in the crumbling Hightown mansion is a study in competing frustrations. 

For one and no small thing, he refuses to air the damn place out. Even after Hawke offers to hire cleaners or roll up her sleeves and help Fenris herself, he does the moody elvhen equivalent of hiding beneath the settee and sobbing. That is--his jaw tightens and he tells her brusquely that it won’t be necessary. 

Then there’s his tendency to go on brutal, roaring benders--breaking bottles, shouting, and stamping his big bare feet. Anders wasn’t present for any of these, but he hears they are something to behold. 

And then there’s his bull-headed, steely rejection of all magic and mages. 

Anders grew up with chantry rhetoric; the repeated assurance that the best and easiest way to serve the Maker was to remain safely behind bars. The Senior Enchanters, the Chant, and the templars made it absolutely clear that his kind are a clear and present danger. But never has he been looked at and told in no uncertain terms that he is a threat who has no right to exist. No cozy rhetoric to couch it in. No appeal to the Maker’s grace. Just...it’s far too dangerous for you to _be_.

So when a ragged, dust-streaked child sticks her head into his clinic and tells Anders that his elf is his in a bad way out on the street, it chafes at something raw and irate. Fenris is not _his_ elf, not _his_ responsibility by any means. But the safety of Darktown’s residents is. A drunk Fenris can do twice the damage of a normal man, even without his enormous broadsword. 

He follows the girl through the dim, fetid streets past haunted groups of dwarves around campfires and bodies lying motionless with cloaks covering their faces. They could be sleepers or corpses--down here it’s hard to tell until they start to stink. As Anders passes, people’s faces light with recognition. A few even lift their hands as if hoping for a blessing, same as they would to a Chantry sister, or the Divine herself. It fills Anders with a creeping sense of shame, but it also feels good to be needed. 

He expects to find Fenris drunk in a culvert or slumped over a barrel in some faraway corner. He is not disappointed. He sees the flickering lyrium-light before the man himself--a burst of lightning that sends passerby flitting out of the way like schools of fish. Enough rogue mages make their homes in the undercity for the inhabitants to know magic when they see it. 

Fenris is leaned up against the alley wall, swaying forward every seconds, as if trying to will his feet to pick themselves up. 

When he sees Anders another flash stutters over his markings, matching the angry flare in his eyes. 

“Bloody perfect,” he grumbles. “What do you want?” He navigates the syllables better than he usually does when sauced. 

“I heard a very festive elf was causing a scene,” Anders says. “I wouldn’t miss that.” 

Fenris bites down on a curse, pushing himself away from the wall. The swoon he falls into is pathetic, doubly so because it probably isn’t feigned. Reflex has Anders in place to catch him before he hits the ground. Anders realizes two things in quick succession: that Fenris is skin and bones, and that he is also going to be in the position to make sure he eats, because Fenris is about to become his latest patient. There is certainly wine on his breath, but his skin also moves in clammy twitches, sweat beading thick on his forehead. Anders moves his hand across his arm to adjust his grip, and Fenris lets out a slick, incoherent sound of discomfort. 

“Get off of me,” Fenris grunts, jerking hard enough that Anders has to drop his staff and rebrace his legs to hold on to him. He’s no waif and Fenris is lighter than he looks, but he is also incredibly long. He touches Fenris on the same place on his arm, drawing out the same hiss of pain. In the spirit of scientific inquiry he repeats the gesture, then does it again on the opposite arm. Fenris yelps and pushes himself out of Anders’ grip. 

“Keep your demon hands off me.” 

Anger--and _Justice_ \--crowd into the front of Anders’ mind but he pushes them both down. Fenris is just another patient and he’ll treat him like one. It does not occur to him to send him away. He is injured, and Anders sees to injuries. 

“Your markings,” Anders says. “They are causing you pain." 

“I’m fine.” 

“Yes, very. If you come back to my clinic I can figure out what’s wrong.” 

Fenris’s eyebrows jab inward. “Why would you help me?” 

“Because I’m a healer, and that’s what we do. Do you think I’d just leave you here like this?” A nasty part of him wants to do just that, but even if he hadn’t had Justice to play on the strings of his conscience, he never really would. “And because you’re blocking the good people of Darktown’s way to the public privy.” When he still doesn’t relent, Anders adds, “Or I could call Hawke--.” 

Tension ripples along Fenris’s body, followed by another sputtering flash of his tattoos. “Don’t--I’ll.” His jaw locks. Unlocks. “Lead the way.” 

As soon as he gets Fenris onto a cot it becomes clear he is in a great deal of pain. He is fighting to keep his breath even, and it doesn’t show in his face, but Anders has been a healer long enough to know what pain looks like when it rides the body. 

“How long has that been going on?” Anders asks, when the markings flicker and die--not a lightning flash. A brief, soft flare. A firefly. Fenris grunts. 

“I can’t help if you don’t answer my questions.” 

“I didn’t ask for your help.” 

“That’s--.” Anders blows out a breath. He’s not going to start that argument over again--his headache can't handle it. “Alright then.” He checks Fenris’s pulse and breathing, talking himself through it. “You went to the Wounded Coast this morning with Hawke, so it must have been after that. Hawke would have noticed her pet elf lighting up like a Yuletide tree. And in the state you’re in it must have taken you the good part of an hour to make it down here...so I’d guess some time in the last six hours.” 

“Speculation,” Fenris grunts. 

“Mathematics,” Anders corrects. 

“Just get on with it.” 

“Your heart rate is elevated, but that could be from the pain, and your complexion is flushed but that could be from the wine.” 

“Does this hurt?” He puts a finger on a mark on Fenris’s arm. 

“Not anymore than anything else.” He looks at Anders’ hand like it’s a spider he wants to squish. 

“This?” Anders knocks his fingers harder, like he’s knocking to come in. Fenris’s brows go up but he remains deadpan.

“No.” 

Anders hesitates a moment, then does something that may prove to be very, very stupid. He presses the tiniest shred of a lightning spell into the large thread of lyrium in his arm. Just the slightest little discharge. Less than the shock you’d get from pulling on a sweater in wintertime. The surge should have just been drawn into the deeper flow of magic like a raindrop in a river. Instead Fenris lights up like lyrium-blue bonfire and cold hands reach into Anders to suck hungrily at the fount of his magic. 

He reels back and his hips hit the worktable, rattling beakers and knocking surgical knives to the floor. Drawing on skills he hasn’t used in years, he shuts down his soul from whatever is inside Fenris that wants to swallow his power whole. He hasn’t needed to both warding of a demon in years; it’s a little crowded in his soul these days. 

“Did you--.” His voice bottlenecks high and tight. “Did you do that on purpose?” 

Fenris is slumped back against the cot, panting. “I would--I would have been justified.” 

“Oh, calm down,” Anders snaps, distracted. “I use magic on you all the time, unless you think the Maker himself comes down from on-high to heal your ragged arse. I barely did anything. The magic in these marks...it feels almost sentient.” 

“Did it hurt you?” 

“No. Much to your disappointment, I’m sure.” That’s just the thing--it hadn’t felt bad. It almost felt good. Good the way giving yourself fully to an act of invocation does. He needs to get a closer look. This might be a greater undertaking than he expected. He shuffles through his shelf of potions and tosses a bottle of elfroot at Fenris, who catches it despite his current state. 

“Concentrated elfroot. It will help with the pain.” 

Fenris's knuckles go pale around the bottle. “I can handle pain.” 

Anders staunches his irritation, but some of it bleeds out into his voice. “I need you relaxed and not wincing whenever I touch you. If you react badly, I could hurt you.” 

Fenris’s eyes narrow. “More magic?” 

“No. Well, yes. But it’s an ambient spell, and I’m doing it on myself and not you.” 

Fenris still looks mutinous, but he drinks the potion. 

“Don’t smash the bottle,” Anders says. 

Fenris stares at him. “Why would--why would I smash the bottle?” 

His voice is full of holes. Elfroot doesn’t naturally have a narcotic effect, but Anders’ own concoctions do. It’s far easier to operate on patients when they can’t resist. 

“I just know you smash things when you get angry. Can you remove your clothes or do you need help?” 

Fenris blinks stupidly at him. Maker, why couldn’t this have happened in the day when he had some of his assistants around. He should have waited to give the elfroot to Fenris after he undressed. But he was worried any suggestion of the like would end with a fist through his sternum. 

“I need to be able to reach the lyrium in your body in order to tell what’s gone wrong. Obviously the magic follow very specific paths--.” 

“How do you figure that?” 

“Your eyebrows.” 

“My _what_?” 

“Your hair is white, but your eyebrows aren't. Neither is the hair on your arms. If elves had beards, perhaps that would be white, but--.” 

“I don’t need to hear the scholarship on it. Just--.” One of his eyelids droops from the elfroot. "Fine." 

In the end they both are needed to remove Fenris's cuirass and the thin white shirt below it. The latter is soaked through with sweat and has to be peeled away from his chest. His skin and perspiration both smell like lyrium. 

Fenris grumbles all through it. Then he says, “I don’t think I can stop what happened before from...happening again. The...reaction." 

“That’s my job,” Anders assures him, and lays hands. 

At first Anders thinks he’s taken the wrong turning in his mind and stumbled into the Fade. There’s just _so much magic_ inside Fenris’s body. Layer upon layer, a vibrating latticework of power. 

“You’re a masterpiece,” Anders breathe, and he’s too overcome in the wash of power to mind Fenris’s snarling retort. _Yes_ , this was forced upon him, the pain seared away his memory, and whoever did this was a monster, etc. But also--they were an artist. Even with Justice’s assistance Anders could never achieve work this precise. 

He feels the anchor of the spell and realizes at once there’s no other way. “I’m sorry, but...once more.” 

He release another single spark of magic and Fenris’s marks react the same way. This time Anders is braced for it, holding open the pathways of the magic the way one would hold back skin and muscle to dig out an arrowhead. There, he can feel the weave of the magic, the tight knot--

Anders steps back. His hands tingle with residual magic. The braziers have burned down to a demon glow. He has the impression that some time has passed since he first sank into Fenris’s power. 

“I have some…good news and some—.” 

“Don’t make jokes,” Fenris growls. His voice grinds low and his chest rises and falls quickly, perspiration glowing on his chest and arms. “Just tell me.” 

Anders takes breaths to steady his pounding heart. His knees are trembling and he feels suddenly drained in more ways than one. “Your marks are eroding.” 

Fenris’s eyes, luminous with lyrium light, flicker open. “They’re fading?” There’s hope in that question, but there’s fear as well. Anders remembers that feeling. 

“They are literally coming apart,” he says, pronouncing every syllable with clean emphasis. “And they’re going to take your flesh apart with them.” 

A line appears between Fenris’s brows. Outside, a wailing starts up and is abruptly snuffed out. Screams follow. All typical Darktown noises. “You mean—.” Anders is used to this part. It gnaws at something low and tired—watching people internalize the knowledge that something inside their body has gone wrong. “That will—.” 

“Kill you? Yes. Unless you can remove your organs and bones and still function.” 

“Can you—.” Fenris grimaces. Anders doesn’t know if it’s from pain or the indignity of asking for help. “Stop it?” 

“No,” Anders says. “I can’t generate enough magic to stabilize it, not even if I channelled the raw Fade.” Which he would never do for anyone, and especially not for Fenris.   
He’s seen the aftermath of those rituals. “Trying would kill me. What you really need is a lifetime supply of lyrium, and seeing as how you live in someone else’s home and don’t even own a pair of shoes, I doubt you could afford the latter. And your only other option is a blood mage, and seeing as we don’t know any—.” 

They realize it at the exact same time. “Oh,” Anders says, just as Fenris says, “Fuck.”


	2. Chapter 2

When you spend enough time around a person, you tend to forget things about them. Paradoxically, it isn’t small details that slip through the cracks. Anders knows how Aveline takes her tea, that Varric always deals cards with his left hand and holds a pen with his right. He knows exactly how many pints it takes for Isabela to bring up that ill-conceived threesome of a decade ago. Worthless minutia has a habit of clinging to the mind like barnacles.

Instead you forget the broad, capital-letter, history-book worthy things. For instance, Anders often forgets his friend Marian is the champion of Kirkwall and thus the third most powerful person in the city. He forgets that the dwarf he plays Diamondback with has an information network that could put a Royal Spymaster to shame. And he also forget that the skinny elven girl who gets giggly after half a glass is one of the most powerful blood mages he’s ever met. 

When he brings it up, Anders expects a fight. For Fenris to insist that they find another way and that he would rather _die_ than submit to a blood mage’s care. But he doesn’t say anything like that. It would seem magic is anathema only until a situation becomes life-threatening. Anders bristles with disdain, but he doesn’t expect he’d feel any better about the situation if Fenris instead decided to die for his misguided ideals. 

They are forced to wait for daybreak. Fenris is too ill to be moved or left on his own, and Anders isn’t about to send one of his runners into the Alienage at night. Darktown is really no better, but Anders trusts it the way you trust a dangerous creature that is familiar more than one that is not. 

In the morning when his assistants come he sends one straight to the alienage with a message and sets the rest of them to their tasks. He then draws the curtains around Fenris’s bed so that only his feet are visible. 

“Ashamed to be seen with me?” Fenris’s words are rigid with pain. His condition has not worsened overnight but neither has it improved. The flares of agony and lyrium-light come in pules, like labor pains. Even with the elfroot he'd barely slept. 

“I would have died of it a long time ago if being seen with you caused me shame,” Anders says. “When people speak of us they do so in the same breath.” 

What he means is--when people speak of _Hawke_ they speak of the two of them. But bringing her up will only serve to agitate his patient. Anders is many things—petty, acerbic, given to brooding--but he is a healer first and foremost. 

Merrill makes them wait on her pleasure, and by the time she arrives it is nearly noon and Anders has already set several sprained ankles and removed a rotten tooth. He is attempting to tactfully tell a dwarf that his putrid breath comes from a horrible diet and not some internal rot set on him by a Magister, when she slips inside, a young elven woman as thin as a ghost and nearly as pale. She has lived in Kirkwall for as long as any of them, but she still dresses like a transplant, in moss green and her old Dalish bracers. And like the rest of them, she has the eyes of a fighter. 

Anders extricates himself from the conversation with the dwarf. 

“Thank you for coming so quickly,” he says mulishly. 

“You said it was urgent.” If she senses his sarcasm she blithely ignores it. Some days Anders thinks Merrill is stupid. Others he thinks she might be the most canny person he knows. 

She ducks behind the curtain just as a mother comes in holding a wailing baby. Anders confirms that the baby has a painful but easily treated rash, before leaving it to his assistants and joining the elves. Merrill is running her hands over Fenris’s arm in open fascination. 

“Ow,” Fenris says, as she moves ice-encased fingertips over the marks. 

“Hush, I’m barely prodding!” 

“It’s the magic, not the pressure,” Anders says. 

Merrill switches smoothly from one arm to the other. “Yes, thank you, Anders, I can tell. I’m not blind, am I?” She shakes her head. “This is…a truly unbelievable mess.“ She looks up apologetically at Fenris. “No offense. I know this isn’t your fault.” 

Fenris gives Anders a swift look he can’t interpret. 

Merrill steps back and the frost fades from her fingertips. “You did very well,” she tells Fenris, like he is a little boy with a scraped knee. He snorts and closes his eyes. 

Merrill takes Anders aside. 

“That is incredible.” 

“Maker, I know. I’ve never seen anything like it.” 

“You hear things about Tevinter, but…” Merrill shakes her head. “If we had mages like that here, perhaps…” 

She stops before Anders has to stop her himself. It doesn’t do to speculate, especially not out loud. 

“He’s dying,” she says. “I’m not a healer. I can’t do anything that you couldn’t do yourself.” 

“I know,” Anders grinds out. “But you feel what that array is like, don’t you? It’s like, it’s as if—.” 

“It’s alive,” Merrill says. One of her ears twitches. “Like it’s hungry.” 

“Do you think it’s—.” 

“Not a demon, no.” 

“Then what—.” 

“Magic comes from the energy in all things, doesn’t it? That’s why forests and oceans and things have magic. It’s where the gods come from.” 

Anders nods, although this is beginning to sound a bit cosmic for his taste. A bit…elfy. 

"Pour enough magic into anything and it will grown a...consciousness. An awareness." 

“ _I_ need more magic,” Anders tells her. “If I’m going to do anything at all.” 

Merrill folds her arms and says, “You mean you need blood magic.” Anders has to prevent himself from slapping a hand over her mouth. 

“Yes, shout it from the rooftops!”

“No…I said it in quite a normal tone of voice. If you can’t even stand to hear me talk about it, do you really think you’ll be able to do it?” She smirks. “Let me make sure I have this right. You want me, the elven witch, to teach you, the great and admirable Anders, how to do blood magic. So you can save an elf that you hate. Why?” 

Anders wants to beg her not to ask him this, because he can’t answer. All he knows is the only alternative is turning Fenris out onto the street and enduring Hawke’s wrath when the news reaches her. He could always just dump Fenris on her Hightown doorstep. _He was yours once. You deal with him_. But even the part of him that isn’t literally the spiritual manifestation of justice knows he can’t do that. 

A mage had fucked this up. It needs to be a mage who fixes it. 

“You think I’m a monster,” Merrill continues, undaunted. “He thinks _you’re_ a monster. Why would he ever trust you?"

From the bed, Fenris stirs and opens one bright eye. Anders had hoped he’d finally fallen asleep. 

“I think all of us could be named monstrous in our own right,” he growls. 

“I don’t…” Anders shakes his head. “I don’t think either of you are monsters.” 

“We can debate philosophy later,” Merrill says, suddenly all business. “I need a favor, to do this. Or the promise of a future favor. Do we have a deal?” 

“Deal,” Fenris growls, before Anders can remind him of the inherent danger in open-ended promises. 

He realizes what she is going to do a moment before she does it. It’s the tiny blade she holds cradled against her palm, but more than that it’s a yank in the ambient magic of the clinic. The snap of controlled chaos as she slices through her own flesh. Fenris barely has time to react before she puts both hands to his chest. He releases a strangled grunt as every mark on his body flares to life. Anders yanks the curtain closed further, though as long as no one here sees the knife they’d just assume it is Anders’ own magic. 

“Be careful,” he hisses. “I’ll get you a bandage—.” 

“No need.” Merrill steps back, revealing the cut on her palm seared shut. Countless other healing scars are layered beneath that one. “Haven’t you ever used it yourself? Not even once?” 

Fenris saves him having to answer by standing up from the cot and immediately keeling sideways against the wall. 

“Ah, watch out. You might be a tad bit dizzy.” 

“Did you—.” Anders feels tingly all the way to the tips of his fingers. Usually when he’s this close to blood magic someone is trying to kill him. “Did you fix him?” 

“That’s only to give him the strength to travel. I need to be on the mount to perform the ritual.” She wipes her blade clean and sheaths it. “And it will have to be performed at dawn, so we’ll need to leave tonight and spend the night in the open.” 

“Splendid,” Anders says. “I look forward to it.” 

Again, if Merrill picks up on the sarcasm, she doesn’t let on. “Good. I’ll meet you in the Lowtown square outside the Alienage. I have some things I need to prepare.” 

“What things?” 

“Just—materials. There’s nothing to worry about. I’m not going to sell you to slavers, am I?” Her mouth drops open as she realizes her audience might not be well positioned to appreciate this joke. She seems to consider apologizing, before thinking better of it and leaving. 

The first time Anders saw blood magic used was after his first escape attempt but before his last, a few days preceding his seventeenth birthday. He’d been traveling on a caravan of players moving north toward Amaranthine. The leader had done it casually, proprietarily, to fell a brace of pigeons for the campfire spit. The same way he might loose an arrow. 

To Anders the act is obscene, unbelievable. The man might as well have taken his cock out and asked Anders to hop on. He’ll do that as well, later that night when he’s in his cups, but Anders is better equipped to deal with that. Certainly he has more experience with fending off that kind of attention from the Circle. 

Some mages use blood magic when they are backed into a corner and the circumstances leave them no other choice. Some do it just because they want power and don’t want to work or wait for it. Anders has never used it. Though he has committed a greater—some might say, the greatest—sin. Dealing with a spirit is like cutting off your head to keep from having to cut out your eye. 

As they wait for evening to arrive Anders sends a runner with a note for Hawke to let her know he may be unreachable for several days, and if she has an emergency—an eventuality that history supports—she should call on one of his apprentices. 

“You just send information out like that where anyone can see it?” Fenris has perked up significantly after whatever it was that Merrill did to him. Enough to drink two cups of Anders’ imported Rivaini tea and devour half a loaf of bread. 

Anders watches him picking up crumbs. “The children down here don’t read. Neither do their parents.” 

“The messages could be intercepted.” 

“The messages are written in cipher,” Anders lies. Some are, but that one hadn’t been. He’s annoyed at having his best practices henpecked by a man who sleeps without locking his front door half the time. 

“Cyphers can be broken.” 

Anders flicks a crumb across the table at Fenris. “Can they? Would you like to have a go at any of these?” He tosses a hand at a mess of papers on his work table. There is no more talk of security after that. Anders tries to suppress the petty surge of delight and can’t quite manage it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> boys please


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm still alive, and I'm still writing this! Slowly!

Scaling the hills without Hawke at their side is strange. Not that Anders requires the Champion of Kirkwall for protection every time he ventures out of the city--he often haunts the nearby meadows and coves for herbs and poultice ingredients. But any expedition of import always seemed to involve her. As if she is the fulcrum around which Kirkwall spins. 

When they reach the Dalish encampment at the base of the mountain, Anders realizes why Merrill wanted to leave at sundown. The colony will be at supper, sitting around their fires and cook pots and talking about whatever it is wild elves talk about. No one guards the edge of the camp but a single scout, eating his own solitary dinner. 

“You!” He jumps to his feet as soon as he sees them, tin plate tipping into the dust. “Halt!” 

Anders wonders how Merrill had thought they could sneak by without anyone taking notice. Then he watches her eye the scout up and down--dark and young with skittish shoulders--and realizes that she never meant to. Her fingers twitch and the air contracts around her. The scout slumps to the ground before he can even take his knife from his belt. 

Fenris pulls the hem of his cloak back so as to keep it from brushing the boy’s body. “Is he dead?” 

“Of course not. He’ll just have a bit of a sore head when he wakes, that’s all.” 

Unless he has a weak heart or lungs. Or any other of a dozen maladies that could endanger someone whose faculties have all but been rendered worthless. A bear could wander by and gnaw a few limbs off. 

Anders airs none of these concerns, and follows the two elves to the path. It is not a route they’ve ever taken with Hawke before, although it is well-trod and free of debris. When he inquires, Merrill tells him it’s not a path humans are permitted to walk. When he asks if his presence is going to be a problem, she gives him an arch look. 

“You aren’t human.” She passes her staff from one hand to the other. “Quickly, now.” 

Disquiet sizzles beneath Anders' skin, even as the truth sits leaden in his stomach. He waits for a jibe from Fenris, but for once he keeps his opinions to himself. Despite the raw surge of energy Merrill had pressed into him back at the clinic, it appears to take all his concentration just to keep moving. He had insisted on bringing a weapon; fortunately Anders was able to talk him out of the enormous broadsword he usually swings around. He’d be unable to lift it, let alone hack through his usual four monsters at once. 

More than once Anders has to catch him by the arm to stop him falling. The third time this happens he growls and jerks away so hard he topples to his knees. 

“Maker’s breath, stop touching me!” 

“Well then, stop looking like you’re about to faint like a Hightown spinster on to her couch.” 

Fenris’ eyes are hostile points in the dark. 

“Did you drink the elfroot before we left?” 

“No. It puts me to sleep.” 

“What? No it doesn’t. You drink it in battle all the time!” 

“It did back in Darktown.” 

“That wasn’t just elfroot--I made that myself.” 

“So you drugged me?” 

Anders experiences the visceral urge to toss Fenris down the mountain. “That’s what medicine is!” 

“Are the two of you quite finished?” Merrill arches her brow. “We’ve got a ways to go before we can stop and at this rate we won’t make the summit until midnight.” 

Anders shelves the urge, figuring he can always kills Fenris after he heals him. He walks just behind Fenris to catch him if he stumbles, ignoring his sounds of annoyance. 

On the mountain the sky is massive, the stars lighting their way up the path. Anders has spent so much time in the undercity he sometimes forgets the sky is even up there, like a dwarf fresh from Orzammar. Fenris snorts the second time he loses his footing on a loose stone, distracted by a falling star. 

Fenris doesn’t look at the sky. Just like he doesn’t look at the buildings in Hightown or the crashing beauty of the cliffs off the Wounded Coast. He doesn’t appear to notice that he lives in a molding, filthy mansion full of spiders. 

Anders could write him off as a philistine or just a garden variety idiot, but he remembers that. The lack of attention for anything but the possibility of attack. It’s been six years since Fenris’ escape from his master. Anders would tell him that it gets better, but he isn’t sure if that’s true. And Fenris would just throw his reassurances back in his face. 

Anders’ thighs have begun to ache, reminding him that time waits for no man, when Merrill tells them to stop here and wait for her to return. 

“Stay here.” 

Her voice prickles across Anders’ spine and up to the base of his neck. Beside him Fenris rolls a sore shoulder. “Where are you going?” 

Merrill nods toward the summit. “Up there. I’ll see you two at dawn.” 

“Wait, what?” Anders takes a step toward her, but just then he sees the two stone sentinels standing on either side of the pass, and realizes why Merrill is still at the mouth of the clearing. He puts up a hand to the barrier, the sparks of power invisible to everything but the deep, molten core of him. 

He grabs Fenris’s hand before he can touch it too; he doesn’t know what it will do to his marks. 

“What are you doing?” Anders demands. He sends out a lash of power against the barriers, though he knows it won’t do any good. “Was the whole journey a trick?” 

“What? Of course not.” Merrill has the audacity to look affronted. “I just want to make sure you don’t wander of and hurt yourselves.” 

“We aren’t sheep!” 

“I’ll be back before you know it.” 

She leaves them in the dark clearing. 

“She’s planning something,” Fenris growls. 

“Clearly.” Anders lights their way further into the clearing with a bouquet of flickering blue on the end of his staff. They set about inspecting their prison for the evening.

The terrain is rocky and barren, and by silent agreement they split up to confirm there are no monsters lurking in shadows, or caves containing wild animals. The giant spiders up here are particularly nasty. Fenris is breathing heavily, and every so often a ripple of light moves across his skin. His profile is strange without his usual bulky armor. 

They find signs of multiple campfires and the fetid remains of what might have been a latrine pit. Anders wonders, as he gathers bracken and coaxes a flame from his fingers to the branches, if they were just everyday travelers, or if Merrill often coaxes people up to this place and leaves them overnight. He has no idea what she gets up to in her spare time. 

Fenris sits down on the other side of the fire, half shrugging out of his shirt to expose his marks to the flames. 

“Does the heat help?” 

“It doesn’t make it worse,” Fenris says. “And if you have any more questions for your treatise or manifesto, or whatever else it is you’ve decided to help me for, kindly write them down and I’ll get to them later.” 

“Do you even read?” Anders snaps back. 

Fenris smiles into the fire unkindly. Anders rolls his eyes and digs into his pack for the flask of Orlesian whisky he’s been saving for a special occasion. And since none of these seem likely to materialize any time soon he might as well use it to mitigate a situation he absolutely doesn’t want to be sober for. He offers Fenris the first drink. Not because he feels particularly gentlemanly; because he doesn’t feel like hearing quips about his disgusting mage saliva. 

Fenris looks like he’s just been offered a basket full of snakes. “Won’t that just make me sicker?” 

“The source of your illness is magical. Whisky is not. Merrill’s barrier will keep other things out as much as it keeps us in. So there’s no great need to stay sober.” Anders gives the bottle an encouraging shake. “But if you aren’t thirsty--.” 

Fenris takes the flask. Anders wonders if Fenris has ever had good whisky. Hawke probably bought him some when they were together. She strikes Anders as that kind of lover. 

"Do you think she'll come back?" 

It takes Anders to work out that Fenris means Merrill, not Hawke. “She’d have difficulty explaining it if we starved to death on a mountaintop.” 

Fenris snorts. “She scares me.” He passes the flask back to Anders. “And not much does.” 

“Do I scare you?” 

“You irritate me.” 

Anders laughs. The whisky is deep and warm, a soft glow down his throat and into his stomach. At least there is someone in Kirkwall who feels exactly the same way about Anders as he feels about them. 

They share the whisky back and forth, and then the dried fruit and salted beef Anders stowed deeper in his pack. Every so often Fenris’s marks will flicker and he’ll close his eyes and hold his breath, letting the pulses subside. It isn’t companionable, precisely, but it is comfortable. As poor as their opinions of each other, they’ve spent a great deal of time in one another’s company. Fenris is a known quantity, albeit an unpleasant one. 

There are places Anders would rather be, of course, but he isn’t sure if alone in his moldy clinic, breathing in the stink of the nearby canal, is one of them. He wonders if Fenris ever gets lonely shut up in that house. 

Fenris’s body lights up and he shakes once, hard. “ _Fuck_.” The dried plum he’s gnawing on tumbles to the dirt. Anders is instantly on his feet, although his options are limited. He can’t reproduce the magic Merrill had used back in the undercity. 

“It’s alright,” Fenris grits out. “It will pass.” 

It does, and he settles back down, hunching close to the fire. He swears, long and inventive. “What is happening to me?” 

Anders passes him the flask. 

“Do you know anything about the spell that did this?” he asks. “Anything at all?” 

Fenris just hunches more tightly. “I’ve told you before--if I ever knew, I’ve forgotten it.” 

“It’s possible the spell needs to be recast periodically.” Anders cracks open an almond shell with his teeth. “And obviously no one here is equipped to do that. Well, except for--.” He gestures vaguely toward the peak. 

Fenris puts a hand out. Anders isn’t quite sure what he wants, so he puts an almond in it. Fenris smashes it down against the rock. “I had the marks since I was young, they were never recast in any way I remember.” 

“The other possibility is just that you were never meant to last this long.” He looks at Fenris in the firelight, at the tight lines around his eyes and mouth, the deep furrows in his forehead. His coloring has always made it difficult to judge his age, and elves always look young to humans. But Fenris must be at least pushing forty by now. That’s old for a slave and even older for a bodyguard. Most don’t make it past the first year. Though it's true that Fenris is no ordinary warrior, even without his magical fisting thing. 

Anders snickers softly to himself. It occurs to him that the whisky combined with an empty stomach and the altitude has left him less in control of his thoughts than he’d like. Which is why he doesn’t put a cork in it when his brain comes out with the question. 

“What happened between you and Hawke, anyway?”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, I say as I shuffle sheepishly in from stage left. Here's a chapter.

Anders braces for a ghostly hand through his sternum, mostly out of habit. He doesn’t actually believe that Fenris will kill him, if only because he wouldn’t want to spend the night on this mountain alone. He appears to be considering Anders’ question with far more careful thought than it deserves, rude and blurted out as it had been. Either that or he has fallen asleep, which is certainly possible. It’s late, and he is very ill. But then he scowls down at the flask and takes another drink. 

“I’m not sure what you want me to say.” 

Anders can tell he’d been on the verge of giving some other answer, but his nerve had failed him. 

Anders takes the flask back. “How about the truth?” 

He regrets it immediately. He doesn’t want to hear the lurid details of Hawke’s choosing Fenris over himself. But he feels this is neither the time nor the place to ask for leniency. 

“The truth.” Fenris snorts. “Very well. The truth. I panicked.” 

Anders waits for that to make sense. “Panicked?” 

“The first time she brought me to her bed, it rattled loose memories of what was done to me as a child.” He says this with the air of a man throwing himself off a cliff because he no longer cares what happens to him at the bottom of it. “I couldn’t stand to be touched. Doesn’t leave much room for romance.” 

Anders raises the flask to his lips. “Depends who you ask, but I catch your drift. When you say, what was done to you…” 

Fenris glares at him like he’s being deliberately obtuse, and in a way, he is. He just doesn’t want to mistake the meaning. Anders tests the thought, trying to pick apart the edges of it. Fenris--young, beautiful and beholden to the mercy of the humans who own him. And from what Anders knows of Magisters, there would be no mercy to be found. His stomach twists with something he can’t put a name to. Disgust? Anger? Shock? He’s known Fenris was a slave, and he knows what happens to slaves. By process of logical association he knows what has happened to Fenris. 

“Don’t get too excited, it was only flashes.” Fenris’s eyes tighten as he rides out a flare from his marks. “More the memory of the way I felt than the specifics of what happened.” Another flash, another suppressed noise of pain. “I’m sure you’ve sustained worse in your Circle.” 

Anders can’t tell if he’s mocking him; any other night he would be sure of it—Fenris has always greeted any suggestion of similarities between their predicaments with utter scorn. But tonight…tonight they feel like altered versions of themselves. The Anders and Fenris sitting on this mountain are fundamentally different than the ones who trail behind the Champion of Kirkwall, taking swipes at each other. 

Anders decides to pretend, just for a moment, that he is being taken at face value. “That’s true for many. I was one of the lucky ones. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say I was one of the ones who recognized the value of my human capital.” 

Fenris raises a brow, telegraphing his impatience with Anders’ circumnavigation of the point. Or maybe they’re both just drunk.

“They were going to put their hands on me no matter what I did. I was young, I was pretty, and I talked back. They were cruel and fully in control.” He brushes dirt from the hem of his robe, throwing an errant twig into the fire. “There’s nothing particularly empowering about selling yourself for extra blankets but it’s better than being assaulted.” 

“And at least you got a blanket out of it.” Fenris’s voice is wry and weary, and perhaps the moment of grim solidarity is purely one-sided, but Anders will take it. He is almost weak with gratitude that Fenris offers no condolences. There’s barely even sympathy there. 

It’s glorious. 

“So you can’t abide Hawke’s touch and now the two of you can barely look at each other.” 

Fenris bares his teeth. Anders very much hopes he doesn’t try to smash his flask. “Are you trying to tell me she chose wrong? Because she knows that and I know that, you don’t have to.” 

“Actually,” Anders says quietly. “I was going to say that I’m sorry.” 

Fenris gives him a sharp look. “I thought you were still hung up on her.” 

“I was. I am. I am also, however, capable of having more than one thought in my head and experiencing complex emotions. You should look into it.” 

Fenris huffs out a tired laugh. 

Anders feels the attack on three levels before it comes. The rippling disturbance in his connection to the fade, the presence of something large and powerful enough to suck all the power away like metal shavings to a magnet. 

Then there’s the anger. The part of him that is Justice boiling up in rage at the thought of something like that walking in the world. 

The third is the thick, ripening smell of putrefaction. Whatever this creature is, it’s been dead a long time. 

The demon looms up out of the darkness, glowing orange eyes and smoldering nostrils, and Fenris does not see it. Maybe he’s in too much pain, or the ambient magic of his marks is dulling his senses. Maybe he lives in a trash heap, so the corpse smell just reminds him of home. Regardless, the demon is an inch from Fenris when Anders lashes out with a spell, swinging his arms to force a buildup of momentum before releasing it from his palm. No time for anything more. It barely ruffles the demon’s putrid fur. But it is enough tip a weakened and tipsy Fenris over and off the stump where he is precariously perched. He hits the dirt a few inches from the fire with a grunt of alarm, shying away from the heat.

“Back!” Anders shouts, the tip of his staff bursting into ghostly flame. It’s a hundred times brighter than the campfire, and both he and Fenris shout and cover their eyes. The demon lets out a shriek of confused rage and shies back, covering its own face with its massive claws. That’s all the time Fenris needs. Even incapacitated and half-drunk, he is twice the warrior than Anders could even hope to be. 

His marks flash blue-white and he screams in pain, but that doesn’t stop him from unsheathing his blade and driving it into the demon’s stomach. Or, that’s what he would do if had it had a stomach, and not just an undulating mass of flesh. 

“Where did it come from?” Fenris growls. 

“I don’t know.” 

“What is it?” 

“I don’t know that either!” 

“Fantastic.” 

They’ve fought possessed animals before--malificarum in the form of predators--but those are usually like their human counterparts. Strong, but still existing in a contained form. This…this seems to drift between animal and demon, flesh and spirit. 

Fenris slashes out again, but the demon is expecting him this time and it stumbles back over the hillocky ground. It goes over the fire, and although the flames dance as if disturbed by a draft, the wood remains untouched. Fenris swears and readjusts. He holds his weight like he’s fighting with a much larger weapon. The state he’s in most of what he’s doing must be from muscle memory. 

He looks strange without his armor, his silhouette at once familiar and unfinished. For some reason the sight of it makes Anders’ heart beat faster. He has never fought a battle with only Fenris at his side. Usually their fights are a cacophony of slung spells and kicked smoke bombs, and Anders is preoccupied with keeping track of Hawke. Not that she can’t take care of herself, she just always sucks up all the air in a room, even for people who are in love with her. At this point most of Kirkwall wants to either buy her a drink or kick her ass, and she would not have it any other way. 

Hawke claims she only ever wanted a quiet life, that circumstances beyond her control shoved her into the center of several conflicts and potential wars, but no one who knows her well could ever take that as true. Marian Hawke is a shining, incendiary thing, waiting for the tiniest spark to catch her on fire. 

The point is, Anders is not used to paying attention to anyone else. But Fenris moves like quicksilver, liquid in a skinny elvhen mold. The demon's blood is oily black, and it hisses when it touches the open air, burning off Fenris’s blade. Anders pushes the apparition back with a cone of cold, freezing it temporarily in place. 

Fenris grunts. Sweat shines on his forehead and neck. Anders doesn’t know exactly what this exertion will do to his condition, but it certainly won’t improve it. “Any ideas?” 

The cold spell will only keep the demon still for so long. It’s already beginning to crack at the edges. 

“None. And you?” 

Fenris’s eyes dart from the demon, to Anders, to the sky, and back again. “On my count.” 

He puts his hand on Anders’ arm, a fine tremor moving through his fingers. Anders’ skin is still too spell-numb for him to feel anything but the pressure. 

“Do you have a plan?” he asks, as the last remnants of the frost leaves the demon and it bellows its rage at the sky. 

“In a manner of speaking. Now!” 

“Now? What are you—.” 

Fenris springs upright, dragging Anders along behind him. Even in this state he is strong enough that Anders almost feels himself lifted off his feet. The demon screams again and charges at them; Fenris veers at the last moment, narrowly avoiding the massive, rotting paw. “Have you gone—ahh!” Anders slips over a loose rock and feels his ankle turn, bright pain radiating all the way up to his knee. “—Mad??” 

Fenris throws him a look back over his shoulder that’s caught between a snarl and a smile. The battle joy is fierce in his eyes, and for a strange, floundering moment Anders grins back. Then he realizes what Fenris means to do, and he curses him to the Void and back again. 

The ragged rip in the barrier glitters in front of them, a broken glass window in the night. Fenris, in a split second, has realized they can’t kill the demon and they can’t force it out, there’s no choice but to escape. Anders just wishes their only way out wasn’t through a very small opening over a sheer drop.


End file.
